Too Soon to Say if Battleborn Will Be a Borderlands-Like Hit, Take-Two Says

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says that Gearbox Software's new shooter Battleborn is off to an "encouraging" start. GameSpot has the story.

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Borderlands developer Gearbox Software's recently released shooter Battleborn is off to an "encouraging" start, but it's too soon to say if it will enjoy the kind of success Borderlands had.

That's according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, who spoke about the early reaction to Battleborn during an earnings call today.

"The initial results are very encouraging. [But] it is early yet," he said. "The scores are good, consumers like it, a lot of people playing it and really loving the gameplay. But I wouldn't want you to draw the conclusion that the Battleborn curve is necessarily the Borderlands curve. We just don't have any of that information yet."

Earlier this month, Battleborn creative director Randy Varnell said the game enjoyed a "solid" start and was in fact tracking ahead of the early numbers for Borderlands. He added that Borderlands had something of a slow start, but sales eventually accelerated, and surmised that the same could be true for Battleborn.

Borderlands is now one of 2K's crown jewels, but it is too soon to say if the same will be true for Battleborn.

Battleborn is currently number 45 on Amazon's Xbox One best sellers list, at a discounted price of $39.88. It's number 76 on the PS4 list, and it sits at number 60 on Steam.

As a Borderlands partisan, I have no interest in Battleborn. It has nothing to do with BL, does not offer the same gameplay or gameplay-types. Have they completely misread the market? Borderlands catered to people who loved coop and adventure and exploration, etc., etc., and Battleborn is what? I have no idea. Some odd combination or comic-shading and arena shooting.

I'm very curious about all the middle of the road attitude people have for battleborn. Ill give you that the marketing for the title has been horrible and blizzard has been actively trying to kill it but still.

Played the beta and had significantly less fun with it than Overwatch. I doubt this will share the same success as Borderlands. Borderlands was pretty fresh at the time. Battleborn didn't/doesn't really seem to offer anything new or exciting. My brief experience with it was that it is boring and confusing. I had the opposing experience with Overwatch. The genre is a bit flooded anyway with tough competition. Some of them are free. Even as good as my experience was with Overwatch, I wasn't willing to plunk down $40 for it. I'll wait for a price drop, and will probably skip Battleborn entirely.

__________________Member of the Nintendo Offensive Front.

Imagine if the working class told the oligarchy to build their own houses and make their own coffee...

Spewing i missed the beta, that would of told me if i need to purchase this or not. Tried Overwatch but no interest. Battleborn looked ok, but game type seems a little weird and not something i could clock up a lot of hours on

Been watching the numbers on this one pretty closely on PC, but with a concurrent peak players of only about 12,000 (and that was on release date, now the usual 24h peak is around 4.5k) the game is pretty much DOA.

Found it to be somewhat enjoyable, though encumbered by a terrible gear system and from what I gather a dreadful "campaign". The only campaign level I could play during the beta wasn't bad actually, but I hear it is not representative of the other levels in the slightest.

Played the beta and had significantly less fun with it than Overwatch.

Not a huge leap, as they're slightly similar games in very different genres. People keep comparing them because of the heroes, but Overwatch's hero system is just a classic hard-class team shooter setup by another name (i.e. 'Torbjorn' instead of 'Engineer'). There's absolutely no MOBA whatsoever to be found in that game, while Battleborn offers a more traditional MOBA experience with an FPS context. I've been avoiding Battleborn 'cause I don't want anything to do with MOBA's, I find the format more annoying than anything, but I'll admit the co-op modes are a little tempting.

Also not sure why people are saying it should be F2P. Just because other MOBA's are? All the characters are included, it has a handful of game modes, and there's a campaign that can be done solo or co-op. It's a fully featured title--not a piecemeal title with one or two game modes. It's a significantly better deal than most of the F2P counterparts, aside from the lack of an established player base.

Only complaint I've seen that would suggest a lower price is the map count, so guess that depends on how fast they add the free content.

Some of the reasons why people want it to F2P is that there is an unlock progression system for new characters (you paid $60.00, so there is no real reason to gate off characters) and MOBA games require a large user base to keep them going and a monetary barrier to entry will stagnate the game far more quickly than F2P. Paragon, which is a competitor to Battleborn, will be F2P as well.